Lost Prokofiev and elegant dancing

hree
contrasted ballets made up the Royal Ballet's triple bill at Covent Garden
yesterday evening. First up was Serenade, choreographed by George Balanchine to Tchaikovsky's Serenade for
String Orchestra. Unusually, the work was not initially created as a complete
ballet, but as a series of dances purely for training purposes for a new company
being formed in 1933. The dances were created for however many dancers had
turned up that day, and incidents which took place during the sessions - one
girl was late, another fell over - were worked (subtly) into the choreography.
Later Balanchine re-worked dances to form a ballet, keeping its quirky nature -
the opening dance, for example, feaures 17 dancers, an unusual number. There is
no plot, just calm and elegant dance for the sake of dance, performed with
fluidity and grace by the company. The lead dancers were Sarah Lamb, Maria
Galeazzi, Isabel McMeekan, David Makhateli and Valeri Hristov, plus a corps of
twenty-one.

The second ballet was
receiving only its third performance. Choreographed by Kim
Brandstrup, Rushes - Fragments of a Lost Story, was inspired by
the incomplete piano sketches of a score by Prokofiev for a Russian film of
The Queen Of Spades, abandoned in 1938 when
Stalin's bureaucrats decreed that historical films did not conform to Socialist
Realism and would no longer be made. Michael Berkeley orchestrated and wrote
linking passages for the music. The Rushes of the title are the fragments of
unedited camera footage viewed at the end of a day's shooting; Brandstrup drew
the theme for the choreography from the early sketches by Dostoevsky for The Idiot, deliberately maintaining a
fragmentary construction.

A curtain of
suspended filaments runs across the stage: like theatrical gauze it can both
accept projected lights and images, and also be seen through. Behind it couples
dance, their apparently successful relationships mocking the drama played out
both in front of and behind the curtain by the principal dancers - Leanne
Benjamin, Tamara Rojo and Thomas Whithead. A plain, possibly brutal, man pursues
a woman in red. She flees him, attempts to evade him, rejects his urgent and
persistent advances, and dances with him only reluctantly. A depressed woman in
grey seems obsessed with the man, who ignores her. There is a sequence of
dances, some heralded by a projected count-down like the leader on a roll of
film. Only when the woman in red has finally shaken off the man's advances does
he accept the attentions of the woman in grey: as the filament curtain is raised
to an empty stage they dance in a joyless passion. Effectively choreographed,
and danced with an intensity which transcended the fragmentary nature of the
ballet.

The final ballet was also
fragmented, though in a different way. Homage to the Queen was
choreographed by Frederick Ashton, to music by Malcolm
Arnold, to celebrate the 1953 Coronation - indeed its premiere was on
the evening of the Coronation. The dances represent the Queens of the four
classical elements, Earth, Water, Fire and Air, their consorts and their
attendants. 'Air' was revived in 1984, reconstructed from the memories of
performers in the original, but the choreography for the other sections has not
survived. For the 2006 revival new choreography by David Bintley ('Earth'),
Michael Corder ('Water') and Christopher Wheeldon ('Fire') deliberately did not
attempt to pastiche Ashton, though the style remained broadly
classical.

Yesterday evening's queens
were Maria Galeazzi, Miyako Yoshida, Marianela Nuñez and Tamara Rojo.
Though well danced throughout, and very attractively staged, the music is mostly
unmemorable and the choreography fairly routine. The final 'Air' section,
choreographed by Ashton, works much better, and the main pas de deux is an
inspired piece of choreography: it was created for Fonteyn and I was certainly
reminded of her style while watching this. This made it worth seeing, but the
overall ballet doesn't really carry enough substance for its
length.